The images are bit like we saw in Darwin back in 1974 [after Cyclone Tracy] – everything's wiped out.

We have telecommunications towers, big towers, bent over like plasticine. There's tin from tin roofing, 25 metres up trees wrapped around them like you'd wrap cable ties around something. There's nothing left here at all.

The level and scope of disaster - I’ve never seen anything like it. Tacloban city is where peoples' concentration has been because it's devastated and there's 250,000 people here, but then extrapolate that out to the whole island chain.

I really fear for the people who are in smaller towns who haven’t had assistance yet. We're expecting more trauma cases and infected wounds to come in from far, far away.

We have an emergency and out-patient ward area where you come through triage, you get seen and stabilised.

If you’re a walk-in patient, you’ll get discharged with medication. If you have to stay for a while, have some antibiotics and an IV, you can stay in the holding area, or if you’re in surgery, you go in there.

And then behind that again there’s a women’s area where we’ve had a birth.

We’ve got a comms and control centre, and moving across into logistics we have an area that steams and autoclaves our equipment and sterilisation.

And then into the major part of the hospital ... it’s a 50-bed facility with two operating tables and a pharmacy. And that is running in operating terms, 14 to 16 hours per day, and then in-patients stay in overnight.

This is going to be a crisis that goes on for months, if not years. We are really focusing on the acute medical issues, but there are huge issues around infrastructure, water, sanitation, power, housing.

All those public health things in Australia that we take for granted.

Essentially you’re rebuilding a city here in Tacloban... And if you think of Australia and the size of those cities in Australia – that's what they’re having to rebuild, just in Tacloban.

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